Mobile devices, such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) have been growing in popularity for many years. As they have grown in complexity, the number of functions they are capable of running has also increased. Cellular phones are no longer limited to merely dialing and receiving phone numbers. Address books, calculators, memo pads, and email capabilities are only a few of the functions being implemented on mobile devices. A problem, however, occurs when attempting to input information to these various functions.
People tend to think of information in terms of words, ideas, and pictures, but current operating systems work in terms of programs. A user must first select an authoring program (Word, Excel, address book, calculator, etc.) before entering the data. This is inconvenience because it implies that the user has decided how to use the information being recorded before it is actually recorded. If the information is later repurposed, it must be cut-and-pasted into a different program or function.
In the casual, mobile environment, cutting-and-pasting is very inconvenient. As a result, people continue to use old fashioned mechanisms to quickly scribble down ideas, such as Post It notes and scrap paper. Even on personal digital assistants, the memo pad requires that the user open a new memo, enter the data, and then cut-and-paste the data to where it should go. This is a slow, awkward, and unintuitive process, and therefore it is seldom used.
What is needed is a solution which allows an individual to enter a thought and then choose what he wants to do with it with a minimum of interaction.